Finding Truth
by Ripples-in-the-pond
Summary: AU: After her mother, Raven's, death, Ren sets out to find her father. In her search she uncovers a prophecy linked to herself, her father, and various other Titan members


A/N I don't own anything that looks familiar. And I'm not sure at all if I'm gonna finish this story. It depends on the feed back I get for it. So review!

Prologue:

Ren fell to her knees beside the ratty cot, her world ending around her. She grabbed onto her mother's hand even as the chocking tears closed off her throat. She couldn't believe this was happening to her. Not her mother… not now. She needed her! Raven was her strength, her whole foundation. How could she go on without her?

"Ren… you must find your father," Raven gasped, her voice no more then a croak. She stared up at her daughter, so much the image of the man that had sired her, and fought to keep control over her sanity. "He… he's in Jump City. Robin… find Robin," she stopped to cough violently. "It's time to play run and hide. You remember the game?"

Ren nodded even as her tears began to slide down her face. It was one of the few memories that she had left. When they had been little, she and her mother had played the game run and hide. They would run from the people chasing them and hide until it was safe to make a home for themselves. And they would be happy. Until the people found them again and the game started once more.

Ren's hands clutched convulsively on her mother's clenched fist. She felt something in her mother's hand and knew it to be a key, could sense from her mother thought's what it was. Slowly, so as not to make the guards suspicious, she bent her head down to her mother's hand and kissed it, working the key up into her mouth. It was cold and tasted of metal.

"There's a train station, two blocks away. Locker number 316 on the east side. Don't forget that. No matter how many memories they take, don't forget that. I love you, my little wren," she whispered before closing her eyes.

Ren watched as the clear blue orbs disappeared and knew her mother was gone. She nearly let herself die also. It would be so simple for her, really, to simply just stop living in that moment. She had a small fraction of her mother's power left within her and she knew that if she wanted to she could destroy her own heart, killing herself instantly. But she had promised her mother long ago that she would never use her powers for evil. And she would keep that promise to her mother. Just as she would escape this place and start the game once more. It was her mother's last request.

She let out a quiet sob and buried her head in her mother's hands as they stiffened and grew cold. She had lost her mother now, as well as all the other things that had been taken from her. And she had very little memories to remember her by. She knew that many of her memories were gone. Not because she could remember the memories that were missing, but because she could feel the absence of them within her mind. No matter how hard she tried, she could only conjure a certain amount of memories back. The rest had been taken from her in the white room.

She stiffened when she felt the guard approaching. With her mother's death, so died the spells that she had cast on the guards. No longer would they shy away from taking the young woman, because there was no one left to stop them. Before, when Raven had been alive, she had cast a spell over Ren's skin, so any unwilling touch caused the owner of the offending caress to see many horrible things, including their own death. With Raven dead, the spell died also and Ren didn't have the power to do it again herself. Nor would she know how to cast the spell if she did have the power.

There was a specific reason Raven had checked them voluntarily into an insane asylum and that was because after several years of the game, Raven had gone crazy. For months before checking in here when Ren was ten, Ren had been the one to mother Raven. She had fallen into a dream world where she lived happily with her long lost lover, Ren's father. Raven had rarely touched base in the real world. It had been on the night that they had almost been captured that Raven had come back to her and saved the day. They had checked in here a few months later and never left. It was a rare occasion that Ren saw her true mother and she knew that today had been the last. Raven was dead.

Ren felt the caressing hand on her shoulder and suppressed a shudder. So soon after her mother's death and already they were taking to her, vultures that they were. She followed the man out of the room, expecting to be sent to the white room as before. But instead, the man led her to her own room. Her eyes widened in fright when the man pushed her into the room and locked the door behind him.

She had to escape, she thought, even as he advanced on her, his dark intent clear to her in his eyes. She had to escape or she would die.

* * *

Robin stood on the roof of the new Teen Titans tower. They were really just the Titans, now that they were no longer teens. After safely protecting Jump City for many years, they had trained replacements and moved their team into Gotham. They had also picked up a new team member. He turned slowly to face the man that stood beside him. Shane had joined the team three years ago at age eighteen and was now a proud twenty-one. He had also become Robin's closest friend.

"Thinking about Raven again?" Shane asked into the quiet around them.

"Yeah… I am. Something's different today, I can feel it. My memories of her were always so bright, but today… today they have dimmed," Robin frowned into the horizon, thinking. He should be glad that they had dimmed. It would make it that much easier to pursue his feelings for Starfire.

"It means you're getting over her, Robin. And that's good. You love Starfire, right?" Robin nodded and fingered the ring box in his pocket. Loved her enough to marry her. But a part of his heart would always belong to the girl he had loved first. He knew that something else was going on, going on with Raven. Something had happened to her and that was why her memories were dim.

"Then don't worry about some chick who dumped you way back when. You gotta move on!" Shane punched his shoulder lightly and kept to himself what he knew. He had secretly been tracking Raven's movements since she had left the tower. It wasn't all that hard for him, and he had a pretty certain idea about where Raven was. But giving the news that Robin's first love was now in an insane asylum wasn't exactly the news you gave a man on the night he was to purpose.

"I need a few days off," Shane said, leaning back against the railing of the roof. The lie slipped easily from his lips, "Got me a babe I want to spend some time with. That okay?"

Robin laughed and nodded his head. "You make me feel old, what with all these 'babes' you got."

Shane laughed also. But it wasn't just any woman that he was going to go see. It was Raven. When Shane had joined the Titans three years ago, Robin had still been trapped in his hurt over Raven's deceit. It had taken a lot of work on Shane's end to get Robin to see that there was another woman on the team, and one that loved him very much.

And all the while a hate for Raven had grown in his gut, one that he refused to allow to fade. And now… now he would get his chance to see Raven and ask her why she left the man that she had "loved" behind.

"Well?" Shane looked at Robin and gave him his classic charming grin. One that he knew killed the ladies and got him just about everything he wanted.

"Yeah yeah… sure. Have fun," Robin slapped Shane on the back as he walked back into the tower to pack. Hopefully, he would come back with some good news, and an explination that would allow Robin's first love to rest in peace.

* * *

Ren sat in the wheel chair, her head bowed, her scraggly black hair hanging limp in her face. But her eyes, her piercing blue eyes, watched every move the people around her made. They were going to take her into the white room, into the room that stole her memories. But she couldn't allow that to happen. They would see her plans for escape, her plans to find Robin. So she had to escape before they did that to her.

She supposed she could thank her guard for saving her from the room these past two days. He had repeatedly called her in sick and made her stay in the room. Locked in with him. But while he had been abusing her body, she had been exercising her mind. And her plans were now complete.

The key was hidden under her tongue, street cloths under her plastic green gown. All that she had been able to find among Raven's things was a tight blue shirt that had a deep V-neck and extremely short beige shorts. The cloths had likely fit Raven, but Ren wastaller and biggerthen her dainty mother had been.

The guard that had caused the so easily visible bruises on her body wheeled her quietly down that hall. She knew that in order to get to the white room, they had to pass through the front hall of the building. The hall that was connected to the door to the outside. She would stab the guard and run. The door she knew was never locked during the day hours. The only locked door that she would have to pass was already behind her. The guard had taken her through.

As they approached the hallway, Ren saw a man standing in the way of the outside world. But she would get past him, no matter what. Even if he did have an amazingly handsome face. She balked at the thought, so unlike her, and shoved it away, instead concentrating on what she had to do. It didn't matter if he was the handsomest man in the world with his shaggy brown hair and strong, classic face, she would get past him.

When the chair began approaching the hallway, she clamped her bony hands along the wheels of the chair. The wheels rubbed along her skin, chaffing and burning. She thought she would break her silence to whimper it hurt so badly, but finally it slowed to a stop. Inches from the hallway. The guard, Tommy, cursed and came around to jerk her hands off, but she was prepared. With a grunt, she grabbed the plastic knife from under her thigh and jabbed. It caught the guard in the eye and he fell back, screaming.

No time to lose, she thought, as she jumped to her feet and ignoring the hideous scene of the guard at her feet, pulled the gown from her. She sprinted through the hall, shoving past the man and threw open the doors to the hospital. She heard shouts behind her and ran, her skinny legs caring her fast and far. She felt someone close behind her as she ducked into the train station and dropped the key into her hand.

Thinking fast, she began dodging up and down the rows of lockers, searching for her number even as she shook lose the tail of people.

When she found the locker, she opened it to find a backpack along with a long coat and a hat. Hurriedly she shimmied into the coat, slung the backpack onto her back and stuffed her hair under the brim of the hat.

Then she walked nonchalantly out into the open and headed for the ticket booth. Just as she knew would happen, the guards overlooked her without a passing thought and headed down another row of lockers. She nearly smirked it was so easy.She and Raven had pulled this trick so many times it was almost routine to play it once in the game. Everyone knew when the people chasing behind her were in a hurry, they stopped looking at faces, just at the appearance. Because of the coat and hat, the men couldn't see her street clothes and black hair. So they didn't bother to look at her face.

Practically singing her success she skipped to the ticked booth and told the man, "One ticket forJump City please."

* * *

Shane looked up sharply as the guard screamed. He saw the pale woman come flying at him and also took note of the bruises along her thighs and upper arms. And the bite marks revealed by the low neck of the shirt. His eyes zeroed in on her face and he saw a barely healed bruise shadowing her left eye. Deep, dark, blue eyes that struck him as very familiar. But then she was pushing past him and out into the world.

"Why didn't you stop her!" one of the guards shouted as he ran past. He shrugged and walked to the woman at the reception desk. Far be it from him to stop a woman from escaping a hellhole like this and making a break for a better place. Not that it was likely she would get far. She was to thin and sickly to outrun the guards. And to crazy to outsmart them, if she was in here.

The woman at the reception desk was young and short, with short curly blond hair and cherry red lips. Her baby blue eyes were ringed by lush lashes and she had a body to die for. The nametag at her chest, a good excuse to look at her breasts revealed by a low V-neck, said Amanda.

"I'm here to see Raven Roth, Ms. Amanda," he said and gave her his world class smile and a healthy wink. She flushed a dark pink and nodded, clicking around in the computer, looking up at him through her lush lashes several times.

A sudden frown took her face as she fiddled around on the computer. She sucked in her breath before looking back up at him with a sad face.

"I'm sorry. Ms. Roth died two nights ago," she gave him a sad frown. "Is there anything else I can do?" He thought for several moments before settling on an idea. Maybe she had kept papers or a journal that could tell him something.

"May I have her belongings? I'm her brother," he quickly flashed out a fake I.D., but it seemed it wasn't necessary. The woman was already shaking her head.

"I'm sorry. Her daughter already had everything thrown out."


End file.
